A Virtual GIS
David Warren
Cquay Inc.
Suite 300, 555 4 th Ave SW
Calgary, Alberta
Canada T2P 3E7
Abstract
A number of initiatives in the WWW community are currently looking at the concepts of a
web registry and web services. This paper explores these concepts when applied to a highly
distributed GIS, with access to a feature collection that represents a land base, which is
accessible as a web service. What results is the ability for anyone to register things of
interest in a geographic context and to have web clients capable of discovering these things
that have been registered. Once discovered it is envisioned that these clients will perform
some form of location-based service that uses the location intelligence of the GIS and the
registered object. The repository that holds the registered objects need not be centralized or
even highly structured, it could also be local to the machine that is running the client
application.
Introduction
This paper is concerned with the possibilities presented by the work being done in three
major initiatives in the WWW community:
- The first, OGC Web Services (http://ip.opengis.org/ows/index.html), are envisioned
as an evolutionary, standards-based framework that will enable seamless integration
of a variety of online geospatial processing and location services. OGC Web Services
will allow distributed geospatial processing systems to communicate with each other
using technologies such as XML and HTTP. OGC Web Services will provide a
vendor-neutral interoperable framework for web-based discovery, access, integration,
analysis, exploitation and visualization of multiple online geospatial data sources,
sensor-derived information, and geoprocessing and location capabilities.
- The second is the OpenLS initiative (http://www.openls.org) whose goal is to develop
standards needed by industry to support implementation of the location services
invoked by mobile or wireless Internet devices. Such standards are meant to support
the growth of consumer markets by ensuring that the wealth of public and private
sector location information and application resources are available for use by both
developers and consumers of mobile applications and location services.
- The third is the OASIS Registry/Repository Technical Specification [OASIS, 2000]
which represents the collective efforts of the Registry and Repository Technical
Committee of OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured
Information Standards. It specifies a registry/repository information model and a
registry services interface to a collection of registered objects, including but not
limited to XML documents and schemas.
As the concepts of web services and web registries are new to most GIS users, this paper
reviews both and then describes the geospatial services in particular. It concludes with
examples of location-based services that are implemented using some of the geospatial
services exposed as web services and web registries containing information about businesses
of interest to the user.
